OUR ANZACS
Hastings’ link with the silent Anzac By Peter McCullough IN a quiet corner of the Tyabb cemetery in Hastings can be found the grave of Leading Signalman Albert Norman Charles Thomson. For decades the grave had no means of identification but about eight years ago a headstone was erected. So much time had elapsed since Thomson’s death in 1922 that an error has occurred and he is identified as “Norman Albert” instead of “Albert Norman.” However the line below the name reflects the role that this sailor played in our history: he was a submariner on the AE2 and, subsequently, a prisoner of war in Turkey. What was the AE2? HMAS AE2 was one of two submarines ordered by the fledgling Royal Australian Navy. It was built by Vickers Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness in England and commissioned into the RAN at Portsmouth in February, 1914. The AE2 had four 18-inch torpedo tubes, one each in the bow and stern, plus two on the broadside, one firing to port and one to starboard. The boat carried one spare torpedo for each tube. No guns were fitted. Lieutenant Henry H G D Stoker RN had command of the AE2 and it was manned by Royal Navy officers with a crew drawn from both the RN and RAN. Together with her sister submarine, the AE1, the boat then sailed to Australia. The 24,000km voyage was at the time the longest one ever un-
Above: Tyabb Cemetery in Hastings. The final resting place of Leading Signalman Albert Thomson.
dertaken by a submarine and took 83 days. At the outbreak of World War I both submarines were assigned to the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force as it captured German New Guinea. While on this assignment the AE1 disappeared without trace and its
whereabouts are still a mystery. After some weeks patrolling around Fiji the AE2 returned to Sydney in November for maintenance and repairs. With no need for submarines in the Pacific or Indian theatres, the AE2 was towed to the Mediterranean and arrived off Egypt in early 1915. There
the boat was assigned to the Dardanelles campaign, the aim of which was to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war and open up supply lines to Russia through the Black Sea. Attempts to open the Dardanelles using naval power were unsuccessful with three Allied battleships sunk and an-
other three crippled during a surface attack. A British and a French submarine were also lost. Despite these setbacks Lieutenant Commander Stoker planned his own attempt. Admiral de Robeck summoned Stoker to his flagship, Queen Elizabeth, and quizzed him as to how he proposed to overcome the hazards of the passage. Satisfied, the admiral said: “If you succeed, there is no calculating the result it will cause, and it may well be that you will have done more to finish the war than any other act accomplished.” Two hours later Stoker had addressed the crew, stating that he would not think ill of any sailor who wished to withdraw. No one hesitated and all settled down to write what might have been their last letters to their families. The submarine was provisioned and was soon on its way from Mudros harbour on the island of Lemnos. Into the provisions went a case of vintage port - a sign of Stoker’s optimism for the mission. In his autobiography “Straws in the Wind”, published in 1925, Stoker recalled how, the gravity of their circumstances notwithstanding, there was still ample room for humour when it came to allocating tasks in the capture of Turkey’s exotic capital: “The captain of the submarine was immediately to proceed in search of rare and priceless gems. The second officer was to inspect the ladies of the harem, during which process the third officer would engage the chief eunuch
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Mornington News 19 April 2016